The devil and James Dean

I was watching East of Eden after reading the book. LOVED the book. The movie irritated the heck out of me. It doesn’t seem to have nearly anything to do with the real story, it is just this vehicle to promote treacherous tortured adolescent idiocy portrayed a la James Dean

I got so tired of watching his teeth gnashing soul squirming and puling and pouting I turned it off. I didn’t like the female lead either, she was annoying.

So then I started to read about James Dean, him dying at 24 driving a race car and that everyone wondered if he was gay or bisexual or what.

Who cares? And the thing is that he is this icon. For being this annoying whiny, kid who can’t really even act except for to exude angst and misery and all variety of flaky and tormented behavior.

Wikipedia has him referenced in something like 50 songs. All referring to this notion of his “mystery” and his “badness” and his sexual experimentation and dying young. Like all this is a good thing.

Let’s go kill ourselves now in a car crash while we are young so we can be cool like James Dean.

Because everyone knows that that is cool.

Kids believe this crap.

What about living a happy long life where we do good stuff? Things that help the people around us? Nah, that’s too boring. But it seems to me that that’s where the real rebellion is, to recognize garbage like idolizing James Dean and opting for something better.